


one of those uncertain hands

by amonitrate



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-26
Updated: 2011-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:04:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/amonitrate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>season two, coda to "Born Under a Bad Sign."</p><p><em>Sam always lays the guilt on himself when Dean’s in too much freaking pain to knock some sense into him.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	one of those uncertain hands

Dean's fuzzy with Jo's Vicodin and no sleep and the fact that his brain had been rattled in his skull a couple of hours ago and things have been dead silent for miles and miles, so he doesn't hear Sam the first time. Maybe not the second time either.

Sam doesn't touch him to get his attention, just repeats his name louder and sharper until Dean turns his head and it feels like he's on a slight delay when he speaks, his mouth struggling to catch up to his thoughts.

"What."

"Pull over," Sam says.

Dean sets his jaw and ignores him.

"Dean, you're drifting into oncoming traffic." Sam's voice is even and neutral. "Pull over."

There isn't any oncoming traffic, hasn't been since they left Bobby's, but Dean's vision is blurring on him and yeah, maybe driving after the week he's had wasn't the smartest idea, but it's not like Sam's slept, either. Or. Well. Sam's body probably hasn't slept. And that bitch had her hands on Dean's car last and that more than anything had made him demand the keys back from Sam.

"I took your car?" Sam had said back in Bobby's living room, bewildered, eyes wide as he pulled the key chain out of the pocket of his jeans like he'd no idea it was gonna be there.

"Meg took his car." Bobby was still eying them like he expected them to go at each other's throats.

"Whatever." Dean had held out his palm. "Gimme the keys."

There'd been a bruise already spreading over Sam's cheek where Dean had clocked him. Nothing compared to the side of Dean's face that Meg had taken a liking to, though, still numb from Bobby's old-fashioned rubbery ice pack. He didn't need a mirror to know it wasn't pretty, he could see it in the way Sam's gaze kept darting his way.

"Dean."

Dean blinks and snaps back to the here and now and yeah, okay, maybe he's drifting. He doesn't pull over right away, though. Straightens up in his seat, teeth clenching against the tug and throb in his shoulder and back, and shoves the fatigue and the painkiller haze away. White-knuckles the wheel until the next exit.

"Where are you going?" Sam asks.

Dean's head is full of possible answers but nothing comes out. He just guides the Impala through the dark streets of some nowhere town, not even a town, not even a township probably. Finds a country road and pulls far enough off onto the gravel shoulder that they won't get clipped by some local doing 90 in the middle of the night. It's all fallow fields and looming windbreaks out here and when he pulls the keys out of the ignition silence creeps in past the ticking of the engine.

"Get some sleep," he tells Sam.

Sam gapes at him. "Here?"

"We've done it before." He closes his eyes and the back of his head aches against the headrest. Must have hit that wall with the rest of him.

"Dean, lemme have the keys. It can't be that far to--"

"To what?"

Sam sputters. "Something. A motel. You know. With beds."

"I'm fine here," Dean says, and it takes some extremely uncomfortable contortions but he gets the keys into his hip pocket. His left hip pocket. The pocket farthest from Sam.

Sam's still staring at him. Dean doesn't need to open his eyes to know it. He just waits. For whatever else Sam's gonna say; for Sam to get out and start walking; for the other shoe to drop. He doesn't know what that other shoe is, just knows it's coming. Eventually. It always does.

"You could at least stretch out in the back," Sam says, voice smaller in the dark behind Dean's eyelids. "You look like -- you look--"

Sam doesn't need the keys to start the car. Hasn't since he was ten years old.

"I'm fine here," Dean repeats. He hears Sam's breath huff out, then the squeal of the passenger door opening. The car rocks when the door slams shut. Dean waits for the crunch of boots on gravel to fade, but the back door opens and there's the slide of cloth on vinyl and then that door shuts too.

It'd be hard to pull someone like Dean out of the driver's seat, even as beat to hell as he is. But not impossible.

Sam's breathing eventually evens out, goes long and shallow.

Dean doesn't sleep.

He spikes a fever two days and six hundred miles later in the middle of a routine salt-and-burn, the kind they can do in their sleep, the kind they do in between big jobs, like pro bono pest removal. It’s nothing, really, just leaves him draggy and a little slow on the uptake, but even nothing is enough when that split second you don’t have is what makes the difference.

Sam’s down in the pit of the grave ‘cause Dean’s still mostly a one-armed man and Dean’s holding the flashlight in his bad hand, the sawed-off in his good, and they weren’t expecting any trouble but all the warning Dean gets is a sudden gust in an otherwise dead still night. He fumbles to bring up the shotgun, his finger already squeezing the trigger but it’s not enough.

Next time he opens his eyes he’s ten feet away from where he started and on his back, staring up at the spindly dark-on-dark silhouettes of tree branches against the overcast night sky. Nothing hurts but he’s not sure how he got where he is and so he rolls onto his side.

“Dean!”

It sounds farther away than he knows it is. Sam’s voice. Down in the grave. Dean gets himself mostly upright, one hand scrabbling on the rough bark of the tree. Pushes against the tree to get his feet under him. “‘m okay,” he calls when he hears his name again.

“Dean.” Sam’s voice right in Dean’s ear this time and huh, Dean’s back in the dirt, lying twisted with a tree root digging into his ribs like someone elbowing him to shut the fuck up. “Dean, Jesus, just lie still for a minute.”

Dean drags himself back up, pulling away from Sam’s hands. His body feels heavy and light at once and time keeps skipping ahead of him like it can’t stay on the tracks. He’s leveraging himself against the tree again, gets going forward, back towards the grave where Sam is, only Sam’s right there next to him, and then Dean misplaces a second or two. He’s not dizzy but it’s like his sense of this-way-up has been removed and his body crashes to the ground again so quick the impact slams his teeth together and he doesn’t have the chance to stick out a hand to slow his fall.

“Dean, shit, goddamn it,” Sam is saying, and Dean just lies there for a minute, confused and breathing in dust. Nothing hurts but there’s something on his face. He reaches up and it smears under his fingertips, wet and the same temperature as his body so that he barely feels it. “Fucking hell,” Sam says. “Stop trying to get up.”

Dean ignores him, or maybe it’s that nothing quite makes any sense. He’s not sure, he just knows he needs to get off the ground, so he tries again. Time jitters forward without him and there’s no transition but now Sam is propping him up against the tree, pressing a hand against his chest to hold him in place.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Dean says, the words coming thin and slow and Sam huffs out a tight little laugh.

“You’re an idiot, is what’s happening,” Sam says. “Stay still.”

Sam digs around in one of his pockets and produces a pen light, which he shines into both of Dean’s eyes before Dean can slam them shut. Somewhere in between the last two times Dean tried to get up he’s broken out in a slippery cold sweat, drenched with it like someone dumped a bucket of water over his head. He can feel it running down his back, pooling in the hollow of his throat and soaking into his tee shirt.

“Sam,” he says, and this time when he speaks he’s aware that his face aches, and when he sniffs it’s like he’s got a runny nose only he doesn’t have a cold. Sam’s got a bandanna or some kind of rag and wipes at Dean’s face with it until Dean gets with the program enough to take it from him. Turns out his nose is bleeding. Not a gusher or anything, just a steady leak.

“The bones--” Dean shoves against Sam but doesn’t get anywhere.

“Taken care of. Dean, I need you to sit still, okay? You’ve blacked out on me a couple times. I need to see where you’re hurt.”

He’s shivering now and the side of his face feels raw where he thinks it might have slammed into the tree trunk but he doesn’t remember that happening. He can’t just sit here, there are bones to burn--

“It’s done, Dean, just--”

\--Sam’s hand slides away from the side of his neck, Sam’s breathing fast and noisy in the dim enclosed space of the car but almost drowned by the thrum of the tires on asphalt. The seat belt is the only thing holding Dean upright.

“Hey. Hey, you awake?” Sam doesn’t glance his way, busy white knuckling the wheel and squinting out the windshield. Somewhere between Dean sitting against that tree and wherever they are now it started pouring, rain a steady drumbeat on the roof of the Impala, streaking the windows and distorting the outside world.

“Yeah,” Dean says, but he’s not sure he is. Awake. He can’t tell if what came before this was a dream or if maybe he’s fallen back asleep and this is the dream, him and Sam driving, lately all his dreams are going nowhere fast and getting there too late so this wouldn’t be a first. Usually he’s driving, though. The back of his head is a dull ache and it’s familiar, this crash-test-dummy sensation. His nose itches and when he rubs at it dried blood flakes onto his fingers.

“There’s a hospital about twenty miles from here,” Sam says. “We’ll need to come up with some kind of story.”

“I went a couple of rounds with a tree and the tree won?” Dean coughs, and wow that’s a bad idea. He shuts his eyes and tries to keep his head still as Sam hits a pothole.

“Funny,” Sam says, but clearly it’s not. “We could just go with the usual, say I found you unconscious and you don’t remember what hit you. Or I guess a broken branch or a fallen tree is plausible, in this weather.”

It’s too much at once but Dean catches up by the tail end. “No, wait,” he says.

Sam laughs, a sharp slap of sound. “Dean, you’ve got like, bark embedded in your forehead. I think it’s going to be obvious a tree of some kind was involved.”

“No, I mean, we can’t go. To the hospital.”

Sam opens his mouth and then shuts it again. Swallows something down. “We’re going to the hospital,” he says finally. “You don’t get a vote on this one.”

“Sam,” he says, but it’s hard to gather his thoughts together to support the instinct. He knows there’s a reason why they shouldn’t go but his head hurts and the rain is loud and Sam is throttling the steering wheel and talking over him.

“This isn’t the time for macho bullshit, Dean, not when you can’t stay conscious for more than five minutes. I’m not going to mess around, not after, not after the accident. We don’t know--”

“Just listen, okay?”

“No,” Sam says, his jaw set. “No. One of these times you’re not going to wake up.”

“We can’t,” Dean says, enunciating carefully around the throb in his head and how raw he knows Sam still feels about what he has to bring up. But he doesn’t have a choice. “I’ve got a bullet wound, Sam. We can’t go to a hospital.”

The silence, or as silent as it gets going 80 in a classic car in a deluge, is something of a relief but he breaks it anyway. “They’ll ask about it. They have to report shit like this. Jo did a good job but she’s not a medic and they’ll know the difference. You know the drill, they’ll make me take off my shirt and the gig will be up.”

Sam shakes his head, pounding the wheel with his fist. “So they’ll ask questions. At least we can make sure there’s nothing seriously wrong, that you’re not fucking bleeding in there, and we can talk ourselves out of anything they throw at us, we can tell them--”

“Sam,” Dean says, and all he wants to do is close his eyes and go away for awhile but all that will get him is a quick trip to the ER and that’s exactly what he’s trying to avoid. “What do you want me to tell them, that it was a hunting accident? It’s not the right season and it’s not a fresh wound. You know how it’ll look to civilians and you know what they’ll do. And how long before Mr. FBI picks up the scent?”

“This was supposed to be a milk run,” Sam says. He doesn’t like it but it’s starting to sink in, maybe, that Dean’s right. “We shouldn’t mess around with this. I, uh, I hit you pretty hard--”

“ _Meg_ hit me, and it wasn’t--”

“How long were you out, before you caught up to me and Jo?”

“Sam--”

“How long?”

Sam always lays the guilt on himself when Dean’s in too much freaking pain to knock some sense into him. “It wasn’t you, you moron,” he sighs. He doesn’t want to have this conversation again. The why-didn’t-you-shoot-me-next-time-I-randomly-go-evil-you-should-shoot-me conversation. Once was enough for a lifetime.

“Sure,” Sam says. “And you’ve been avoiding motels and sleeping in the driver’s seat since we left Bobby’s because you’re stepping up your car fetish.”

Dean doesn’t have an answer to that one. He knows it wasn’t Sam, he knows. But sometimes knowing isn’t good enough.

The headlights flare over the white-on-blue H that points out the exit for the hospital as they pass it by. Dean sets his teeth against the awful grind of the windshield wipers against glass as the rain lets up and Sam slows down to take the next exit.

“We’re getting a room,” Sam says, and Dean supposes that means he won the argument.

“She really hates you, you know.”

Dean turns away from the smeary bathroom mirror where he’s trying to clean the scrapes on his face that have gone messy and swollen, already starting to scab. If Sam hadn’t still been hung up on Meg and the possibility of Dean’s brain swelling in his skull the teasing would be relentless, given that there’s a distinct tree bark pattern ground into his forehead and cheek. Dean guesses he’s lucky Sam’s too distracted to break out the camera on his phone for blackmail purposes.

“Who?” Dean says, though he knows damn well who Sam’s talking about. When Sam doesn’t answer, Dean ducks his head out of the bathroom. Sam’s standing by the room's one window with his hands on his hips watching the rain. The motel is the first Sam found off the highway and it shows. The walls are a drab grey-beige, barely a minimal effort spent on decor. The bed spreads are faded and pilled and a cock-eyed antenna crouches uncertainly atop the t.v. With their luck, it's probably black and white.  

  


Sam seems to have decided Dean isn’t going to keel over again any time soon, so he’s been left in peace to pick bits of bark out of his face with a pair of tweezers he sterilized in the flame of his lighter. “Dunno why she doesn’t hate you, too,” he grouses, going back to his work.

“Oh, she does,” Sam says. “She just hates you more.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask _why me_ , given how fixated Meg was on Sam originally, but Dean stops himself. He knows why. And that’s not anything he wants to get into right now, not with the heavy-metal drumbeat in his head and the too-tight stretch of his skin over his bones that comes with fever and the deep ache in his shoulder. Jo had done a good job patching him up but a bullet wound was a bullet wound.

“I mean, she _really_ has it in for you,” Sam says, oblivious to Dean’s silence. Or maybe not so oblivious, it’s hard to tell, but his tone is more impressed than anything else. Like he never imagined anyone could carry a grudge against Dean. Which is ironic, considering.

“Lucky me,” Dean mutters, smearing antiseptic cream over the scrapes and gouges on his face. There’s no good way to bandage them and it’s not like they’re serious, so he’s just going to have to live with looking like raw hamburger for a couple of days. All told it’s not that much worse than before the tree hit him, what with the half-healed bruises Meg had left behind.

When he abandons the bathroom Sam makes a project out of checking his pupils again -- as even as they’ve been since the Impala was totaled, which is to say his left is always just slightly larger than his right -- and poking at his shoulder.

“You and Jo go to the same first aid class?” Dean grouses as Sam yanks away the tape holding the gauze to the hole in the meat of his shoulder, taking half his skin with it.

“You’re lucky Jo was there.” Sam’s voice is flat and he’s not gentle, not trying to be. Still pissed off they’re not at the ER, probably.

Dean makes a noise in the back of his throat because yeah, he was lucky, but shit this hurts worse than Jo’s butchery. ‘Course, it had helped that he’d been running on adrenalin then. Not so much now.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Sam says, and Dean barks out a laugh.

“What?” Sam demands.

The next laugh comes out more like a cough that’s been through the meat grinder a few times. “Nothing.”

“I can’t believe you let me shoot you.” Sam mutters, prodding at the bloody mess.

“Didn’t _let_ anyone do anything.” Dean breathes in through his nose, tries to keep things steady. “And you weren’t exactly in charge at the time, Sam.” He’s gonna have to repeat it a thousand times and god knows if it’ll ever sink in and the realization makes him weary. More weary. Whatever.

He’s met with a sullen silence and he’d be able to see Sam’s face if he craned his neck, but he doesn’t. What he wants more than anything is to not be here right now. The thought catches him short and then burns away as Sam does something that lights his entire left side up like the chemical flash of a flare.

Sam bites off a curse and by the time Dean can focus again he’s limp as an overcooked strand of spaghetti, lungs going on without him in shallow little gasps. Lying on the bed half-propped on his right side with pillows so Sam can get at his shoulder. There’s bile in the back of his throat that he swallows down, afraid to cough, to jar anything.

“You haven’t been taking any fucking antibiotics, have you? Jesus Christ, Dean, you can’t--”

“I didn’t. I didn’t have any,” Dean wheezes. “Neither did Jo.”

Because Meg had taken the Impala and with it their first aid kit and stash of meds.

“That’s such bullshit,” Sam seethes. “It’s been _days_. What is this, some kind of macho thing? Even dad didn’t pull crap like this.”

“It’s not that,” Dean insists, his eyes jammed shut against a wash of nausea. “It’s just first there wasn’t time and then I was doing okay and we might need ‘em. Need ‘em more later.”

He can hear the scritch of Sam tearing off pieces of surgical tape. Sam’s touch is rough but he’s not trying to hurt, Dean knows that. It doesn’t matter how careful Sam is, it’s bound to hurt anyway. It’s what bullet holes do.

Sam presses fresh gauze to the wound and tapes it in place. “Because we have no way of getting our hands on more antibiotics. Right.”

Dean shakes his head even though the movement rubs his scraped-up face against the scruffy comforter. “Sometimes we don’t,” he says, and as he says it he knows it’s stupid. It sounds so stupid now. Out loud. “I didn’t do this on purpose, Sam. I just... wasn’t thinking.”

“You need to see a doctor,” Sam says, but it’s empty of everything, just a statement of fact.

“I know,” Dean slits his eyes open enough to see Sam sitting on the floor next to the bed, the tape and gauze held loose in his hands.

“We could say it was an accident.”

Dean takes a breath so he can get the words out even. “That might have worked right after it happened.”

Sam doesn’t look up. “We could say we were out hunting in the woods, had to hike back--”

“It’s not the right season. And like you said, it’s been days.”

Sam’s chewing on his lip, like he used to do when he was eight or nine and worrying at Dean about when dad would be home. “If things were reversed, you’d--”

“Probably,” Dean admits, shifting by increments to ease off a sore spot over his ribs. “But it wouldn’t be the smart move. We can’t risk it, Sam. We just... we can’t. Not with the FBI on our asses.”

It’s just a replay of their argument in the car and Dean knows Sam knows he’s right. He also knows that if things get too bad, Sam will ignore him, FBI be damned.

Nothing he can do about that.

He jolts awake to Sam slipping the pillows out from under his shoulder, easing him flat. Sam’s immobilized his arm and shoulder with an ACE bandage and Dean’s first jumbled thought is to get the thing off, free up both hands in case he needs them, but Sam isn’t Meg and the way he feels he isn’t going to be using both hands for awhile. Might as well face reality.

“Here.” Sam hauls him part way upright and hands him a pile of tablets: the familiar oblong horse-pill of the antibiotic and a couple Tylenol 3. Waits until Dean’s popped them into his mouth to hand over a glass of water.

“Jo called,” Sam says as Dean chokes down the meds.

“Shit.”

For the first time in hours, maybe days, Sam’s expression breaks into something like a rueful smile. “Yeah, she’s a little pissed at you.”

“She on her way here to kill me herself?” Dean asks, sinking back to the mattress, every bone in his body made of hot lead.

Sam considers his next words like he’s picking them off a menu, but ends up just shaking his head. “Nah, she’s got a job. Can’t just go running off to kick your ass.”

“Good,” Dean says, but he’s barely following what they’re talking about anymore he’s so tired. And then... oh. Yeah. “How’d she... she talked to you?”

Sam’s quiet for a long time. “Enough to find out you’re still breathing.”

Dean doesn’t need to ask whether Sam remembers Meg attacking Jo in the bar. He should probably say something, remind Sam for the fiftieth time that it’s not his fault, none of it is his fault. But he’s still dogged by quick glimpses of his brother with a gun aimed at his chest, Sam up close and personal gripping his head with one big hand while he digs the fingers of the other into the wound, and god his shoulder is a black hole of pain and what does it matter? Sam’s going to go on blaming himself no matter what Dean says.

So Dean keeps quiet. Listens to Sam rustling around somewhere in the room until he’s eclipsed by sleep again. When he dreams he dreams of driving, the seat next to him a wide empty expanse, and he doesn’t know if it’s a nightmare or a wish or a memory.


End file.
